From Public Energy Number One

Posted by Terry Etam on January 14, 2022 

“Wow, you really are happy to see me, luv.”

“Blimey, no, I’ve got me ferrets in me trousers.”

Any Monty Python fans out there? For the non-initiated, the UK comedy troupe unleashed a barrage of wickedly funny absurdist humour that set a high watermark for comedy for decades.  The Ministry of Silly Walks. Ancient philosophers playing soccer against one another. Legendary quotes such as this one from a French solider to  “I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal-food-trough wiper. I fart in your general direction.” 

In order to get a fix, us fans had to go dust off old DVDs or sample random snippets on YouTube. There has been little comparable since the group folded. Until now, that is. 

That famous British droll absurd weirdness has now infiltrated the news, and what makes it especially funny is that the newscasters deliver it with straighter faces than the legendary comedians. 

The quote at top is not Monty Python, but it could be, and it is indicative of what passes for news in Britain. For the wise soul that does not pay attention to the news, Europe (and the UK in particular) is undergoing an energy crisis – industries are shutting down due to the high cost of power/natural gas, and citizens’ utility bills are going through the roof. Many cannot afford the bills and are taking drastic measures to keep costs down.

One British energy utility posted a blog (since modified), as reported by the BBC, offering helpful tips to consumers: Cuddle with your pets to keep warm. Eat porridge because it increases blood flow, but stay away from spicy chili because it makes you sweat. Have a hula hoop contest with your children.

If that’s not blistering satire, what is? The country is in the midst of an existential energy crisis where people may or may not be able to heat their homes, and a utility provides…that?

Nor is that the end of it. At the recent COP26 circus, the gathering of the world’s guilty global elites, celebrities flew in from around the world on private and commercial jets to formulate lectures on how the rest of the world needed to quit being such energy gluttons. Funny addendum: should there actually ever be any meaningful global emissions reductions, all serious commentators have noted that carbon sequestration will be a necessity. The hydrocarbon industry pretty much must be at the center of any CCS plans, because it is a game played on their gameboard.

Yet the organizers of COP26 barred from participation any hydrocarbon companies (though some snuck in to see what would unfold), as noted in Euronews: “COP26 has made it a policy to exclude polluters from the summit.” [Emphasis added]

So…providers of fuel are polluters, and not welcome. Hollywood celebrities on private jets are deemed not polluters, and hailed as heroes.

Furthermore, the EU has gone one stupid step further: both private planes and yachts are exempt from the latest EU Carbon Pricing plan

Let’s head over to Germany for a wrap, some stereotype-busting proof that the Germans can play the absurdist game as well as anyone. Germany is arguably the nation most advanced in its drive to go all renewable and to limit emissions no matter the cost. The country has spent hundreds of billions on wind and solar. Yet, at the start of this year, Germany shut down three perfectly capable nuclear plants that were injecting emissions free energy into the system. This lost power has been replaced mostly with coal and natural gas. 

Actually, the last bit isn’t quite true – the Germans would love to replace the lost nuclear power with natural gas if they could, but because of a pissing contest with Russia, that gas is unavailable, and the rest of the world is in a bidding match for what is out there. 

Sadly, the whole situation is not funny at all, even if these actors are. BNN Bloomberg summed it up well: “Europe’s energy crisis intensified as the risk of war pushed up gas prices, power-plant halts were extended and the French government asked its biggest utility to take a $8.8 billion hit to protect consumers.”

As much as I feel sorry for the citizens of Europe, two thoughts come to mind: first is that I’m glad this catastrophe isn’t happening in a place like Africa or India or other low income region; and secondly – you voted for these idiots. No gloating here though, Canada isn’t far behind.

Pick up “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” today, before it’s illegal! Available at Amazon.ca or Amazon.com. 

by Jo Nova

Who would have guessed that giant protected monopolies would devolve into wallowing workplaces where sad-sack un-productive workers accumulate?

“Hazard Harrington” writes from the inside of Big Tech about the terminal decline, the dark moods, despondency and lack of productivity. When the most exulted culture at work are the most victimized, the miserable workers share their misery and nobody gets anything done.

Wokeness is that dead end where everyone can blame everyone else, and no one, apart from white men, can be sacked. So the people who can’t compete collect in a kind of Sargasso sea of civilization.

h/t Bill in AZ

@HazardHarringto from Inside Big Tech

… COVID/WFH [Working From Home] has totally broken people. They are fundamentally weak, often with no social support outside of work. They’re the people with no children, no spouse. Only a dog or cat for emotional support.

There’s constant talk, even now, about how hard things are for everyone. Often meetings start with going around the room to ask “How is everyone feeling?” Literally everyone else went on sad rants about their lives. “I’m so MAD a white supremacist shot 3 black men in Kenosha!”

It’s bad to feel good:

It’s toxic. When it got to me, I said “Good.” and then a (((lady engineer))) literally proposed that we should not be allowed to answer the question positively. I shit you not. I think it hurt her that I wasn’t as miserable as her.

Thus The Big Tech empires have become Soviet style microcosms — because they are protected by Big-Government and able to swallow up competition in a predatory easy way, they lost the hard edge of competition and gained the luxury of supporting and fostering every cultural soft whimsy, debilitating ideology, and self-defeating dark habit.

The Great Resignation is real. Many employees are leaving for better jobs. Remote work has (so far) resulted in more job opportunities for those working in Big Tech, especially outside of Silicon Valley. And so we backfill those positions, or hire new people, all remote.

We now have employees who have nearly 2 years of tenure who have never met another employee in person, and lives alone in some city away from where the office was.

The churn in good workers leaves the last decent employees training everyone new. They can’t get anything done, but the new employees, probably remote, don’t get enough support to thrive either.

We’re running on the code written in years past. No major new product initatives are being launched.

Bosses have become left-wing therapists

We know Big Tech management will sack people with conservative or outspoken male views, or who just says “toughen up sunshine” because they are not paying enough deference to the Wokish totems. So it follows that the vacuum of realism was filled with red carpet support for anyone as long as they’re “sufficiently left” or a minority. They “can agitate, complain, do no work, and continue employment.” That in turn became the self-reinforcing spiral. The sensible left cajoled each other into becoming militant progressives and there was no one there to put the brakes on.

Management has become “understanding” to the extreme. Anyone who has had a bad sleep can be excused for the day.

“Bring your whole self to work” was the Big Tech mantra. Tell people about your cool hobbies, share your politics (if you’re far left only), share your sex life. This plus the feeling of distance an online-only presence creates has made people braver in speaking their thoughts.

You used to have to have the balls to knock on the CEOs office door, or schedule a meeting. Now you can fire off a nasty Slack message straight to her. People will openly write threads and comments throughout Slack bad-mouthing the higher ups at the company. And they do nothing.

Productivity is essentially zero, or less:

We had a woman who worked for us who was just awful at her job. Could not understand instructions at all. Could not do the job. Barely spoke English. She wasn’t just not productive, she actually dragged the team down. I worked with my Director to finally get her fired after…

…failing her Performance Improvement Program (PIP). HR told us they can’t fire her because she’s Asian and female and in California, that it’s just simply too hard. This was over 5 years ago.

And I’m not productive either. I’m constantly bombarded with anti-white, anti-male, woke propaganda. We’ve even had explicit discussions of assigning less work to URMs (under-represented minorities), because “life is really hard for them right now.” This suggestion was from a lesbian white woman with cats.

As productive as one person can be, you can’t add value when constantly thwarted.

I worry about this apathy spreading to companies that matter. Ones that write software for utilities.

The Great Monopolies have become socialist corporations like the USSR, eaten from within, but running on momentum.

VoxDay writes

We are going to win this cultural war. Whereas conflict is the air we breathe, the delicate snowflakes of converged Corporate America can’t even handle reading the news headlines. Whereas our morale is antifragile, and we become more determined with every deplatforming, discrediting, and demonetization, their morale is breaking under the weight of their loneliness.

Big Tech leads the way, but the commenters below this extraordinary thread find similar themes in their own workplaces, in academia and “much of American society in general”.

America needs a mass emigration from Big Tech to Free Tech, and Big Tech is working towards that, banning their own most popular commentators. The more they ban the better. But here’s thing, Hazard Harrington is writing about the flaws of Big Tech from his Twitter account. He’s gone from 0 to 17,000 followers in just two months.

If you visit @HazardHarringto — tell him to make his exit plan now to take his readership with him. We all need an escape plan.